


Nasty Woman

by eracitor



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Homophobia, LGBT slurs, Threats of Violence, Trauma, there's a lot to unpack, there's...a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23213452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eracitor/pseuds/eracitor
Summary: There's only one way to make things right that Anna can think of. It just takes a little push in the right direction.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Nasty Woman

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally write this kind of content so I want to put a warning here: This piece is somewhat violent and discusses a lot of not-fun topics. I don't really even know how to tag it so just have caution. I also want to say that I'm not usually one who enjoys purposefully abrasive writing. I like writing about friendship and love, but a lot has happened to me in the past year and I needed a way to get out my feelings, and living through the voices of characters I love is usually how I do it...even though i do stretch the characters a little sooooo I'm sorry. Warning: READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

Ever since she was a little girl Anna felt she was different in ways that no one could understand.

The first difference was obvious; everyone else could use their legs. She was used to it by age 17, but no one else seemed to be. It was the first thing they saw. It was the center of their attention from the moments they layed eyes on her. It was most frustrating because people were so easily distracted in her presence and had so many unoriginal, boring questions that she got more and more bored of over time.Were you in an accident? How do you get from here to there? Can I play with your wheelchair? However, Anna was a very positive and loving person, so she tried her best to be patient. She did pretty well for a long time.

She drew enough attention, though, so she always hoped that no one else would find out the second reason she was different: Anna was a lesbian. She loved girls from the moment she truly understood what set boys and girls apart. No, not the stereotypes. The _feeling_ she started to get as she blossomed as a woman. She grew up with plenty of boys, who seemed pretty simple to her. Girls were not. Girls were both delicate and fierce. Girls were great listeners and interesting speakers. Girls were intelligent but silly, confident but humble, perfectly flawed.

Not to say boys weren't the same, but the feeling didn't send Anna's heart pumping. Anna wanted it to be clear to herself that she didn't hate boys; she had plenty of friends that were guys growing up, but her heart belonged to everything that went with women. 

Her secret was guarded like gold as soon as she knew. She'd heard the things people said; she'd seen what happened to women who tried to hold hands in public or what supposedly loving parents did to kids who came out. Anna wasn't prideful enough to insist upon recognition of her sexuality, at least not until she could be certain she would be safe when she did it. To get kicked out at this age would be detrimental; just look what happened to Ilse for something beyond her control.

So instead, Anna supported her friends and daydreamed about her crushes. When Martha, with the most beautiful brown curls and big brown eyes and smooth brown skin, told Anna that she looked good with her hair up, her heart leaped out of her chest. She wore her hair up for three weeks straight after that, hoping every day Martha would see and notice her.

The other girl seemed to have a lot on her mind though and stopped hanging out after school. Stopped sleeping over at Anna's house. She started wearing long sleeves and a dark expression more often than not. It broke Anna's heart. She didn't understand what happened. For a while, she believed it was because Martha somehow found out her secret, like the narcissist she was. She felt a lot of guilt, but she soon realized that Martha was beginning to distance herself from everyone. And her other friends were often doing the same.

Then there was that day they all managed to find time to hang out together and decided to hang out by the river where the trees were large and could give them shade, talking about boys they thought were cute.

"I think Moritz is dreamy," Martha said, to Anna's complete disappointment.

"Agreed!" Ilse giggled, almost manically. Her pupils had looked a little abnormally large today but Anna hadn't thought much of it. Ilse had been doing a _lot_ of experimenting lately...

"Melchior is the most handsome," Thea disagreed, to the approval of most of the girls. "What do you think Anna? Isn't Georg after you?"

That was news to Anna and not the good kind. He'd barely said more than a word to her. "Not that I know of."

"I think Otto's kind of cute," Melitta commented absently.

"I don't really think he's into you," Thea turned up her nose, a tense look being exchanged between the twins.

It had barely touched her mind before or after that silly little conversation about school crushes. It felt just like when they were in grammar school, just girls being silly and talking about boys in the make-believe sense. She went about her day, went about her life, until about a week later she heard some of the boys having their own little talk outside in the schoolyard.

"Melchior's going to lay Wendla any day now; I've got money on it," Hanschen said, a cigarette between his lips and a nonchalant expression on his face. "It's kind of disgusting really. He keeps referring to it as 'making love.'"

Melchior sent him a look from behind a book. "I'm certainly closer than you'll ever be." 

"Well, isn't it?" Ernst wondered, seeming a little hurt. "Making love, I mean..."

"It's just that I'm not so pretentious that I can't see fucking for fucking; Melchior and Wendla aren't in love, they're just horny teenagers," Hanschen rolled his eyes, before looking at Ernst meaningfully. "Not to say love isn't possible at our age. Just that the probability of Wendla and Melchior being soulmates is very slim."

"I love her more than I love my mother," Melchior insisted.

"Yeah and if I had any doubts about you fucking your mother, they're gone now," Otto snickered, making Hanschen and Geog burst into giggles as well.

"I'd like to take a stab at Anna, myself," Georg inserted, startling Anna at his abrasive statement. She'd been listening from just around the corner and had been pretty fed up with it until she heard her own name. She leaned closer, wondering if perhaps what Thea said had been true.

"We've been over this," Otto snorted, jabbing Georg in the ribs with his elbow. "Just because she's not exactly racking in guys doesn't mean she'd want to fuck your ugly ass."

"You don't even know that she can...you know, down there," Moritz added, looking puzzled.

"Are you a moron?" Hanschen sneered. Ernst at his side looked incredibly uncomfortable, choosing to smoke his cigarette and look away. "She's a paraplegic; her legs don't work but she still has a vagina. Whether or not she can feel any pleasure from sex, well, that's the question."

"So what if she doesn't?" Georg replied without a single emotion in his voice. "Girls don't even really like sex anyway."

"Well, maybe not with you--" Melchior attempted to intervene.

"Especially not with anything that has a penis," Otto interrupted, laughing at him and moving his eyebrows suggestively.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Georg asked furiously.

"You know exactly what it means."

"C'mon, Georg," Hanschen agreed, tongue in his cheek. "We all know Anna isn't frigid because her legs don't work. She's frigid because she's a carpet-muncher."

"You shut up," Georg said, now furious. His stance was tense and his jaw was tight. "She's not a fucking dyke."

Having been peeking around the corner, the moment he said this Ernst locked eyes with her, the only one to know that Anna was there. He turned back to Hanschen, bumming the cigarette. Choosing to ignore what Georg said and the fact that Anna had heard him.

The word slammed into her chest like a bomb, exploding every feeling she could think of into her body. Shame. Hurt. Fury. Guilt. Panic. Disappointment. Resentment. Anxiety. Confusion. Fear. Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain. 

She fled away as quietly and quickly as she could, unable to stick with one emotion long enough to understand what exactly just happened. She'd never heard that word before, not aimed at her. Not when she thought she'd given no one any reason to do it. She supposed it would have happened eventually, but it brought no relief. All she could think of was how alone she felt, how alone she'd always felt. Loving girls came with a price; she could never be that close to girls, in fear that they would find out and believe her to be using them or preying on them. Which was the last thing Anna would ever want a girl to feel. And now she knew how the boys would react: by calling her the ugliest word she could imagine.

To be reduced to such a hideous-sounding word broke her heart. They said it like the insult Anna always knew it was. She never understood what made something a slur, what made it that much more powerful until someone was saying it at her. She'd heard hurtful things before; she had to remember to be patient and kind and caring despite it. She had to remember. She had to remember. But she could barely think of anything except how hurt it made her feel, that people could so cruelly box her in with that word.

Nothing happened that day. No one said anything. Ernst never approached her about eavesdropping on the group of boys. Georg approached her a couple times, and Anna knew he wanted to ask her out but he never had the guts for it, and half the time he was preoccupied in his piano lessons anyway. She could feel it though. Every time he looked at her she could hear "she's not a fucking dyke" echoing in her brain.

Then came the day when Anna found out why Martha had become so different. When she confessed what her father had done to her, mirroring the dark rumors surrounding Ilse's past. That's when Anna landed on one emotion she'd been avoiding for so long, for fear of stereotypes or patronizing voices.

She landed on rage.

A fiery fury that would not be extinguished, as she remembered the way those boys spoke about them, about _her_. Every time she remembered, she remembered times that men had let her down. Every time she remembered, there was a new reason for her to hate them. She remembered the way adult men had failed not one but two of their daughters, by taking something a father should never take from their daughter. She remembered how Wendla soaked in Melchior's darkness like a sponge, relieving him of all his tension and anger and sadness as it saturates her soul. By doing all that, giving all that to him, as he continued to take and take and _take_. She remembered how many little kids grew up without fathers or with angry fathers, ones who yelled and threw things and didn't even pretend to try and protect their children. She remembered every disgusting assault on gay and/or trans women she'd ever heard. Every memory brought up another memory she knew.

It didn't stop. Things continued to happen. Hanschen taking Martha into a room, locking the door and beginning to masturbate in front of her, to the shame of his not-so-secret boyfriend. The pitting of what used to be two inseparable twin sisters against each other. Melchior's colonization and eventual dictatorship over the body of a girl who barely even understood what it meant to give her body to someone. That supposed "tortured" boy, edging Ilse to kill herself. Telling her to do it, that it'd be worth it. That it was the right thing to do. Those boys were all so selfish and twisted and seemingly unaware of the effect they had on the girls around them. How couldn't they see? Every time they said they respected women it was like a slap to Anna's face because clearly respect was not what they were giving them. That's not what respect feels like. That's _not_ what respect feels like. It's _not_.

It was in an argument with Georg that made Anna make a grave decision.

He had been dodging what he really wanted to ask her for months now, always coming up, almost asking her out, and then chickening out, leaving the conversation hanging. He, apparently, had gotten some very helpful advice from Hanschen. "Hanschen said I need to take my balls back and just ask you on a date."

"It sounds like Hanschen still has your balls, if you only asked because he told you to," Anna replied somewhat blankly, as she wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. Wendla mixed up in more Melchior drama, which you would think would be near possible after he finally took too much from her. Apparently he still hadn't figured out what the word no meant.

"Haha," Georg pretended to laugh, although she'd clearly hurt his ego. God, men were so disgustingly fragile. How had she been so naive not to notice? She had wanted to be good, to be kind, but she couldn't summon the energy these days. "Seriously though. I think we both owe it to ourselves to give it a go. I mean, we've been friends for years now."

"Define friends," Anna replied, her attention more focused on him now. She didn't mean to be snarky but she'd been dealing with an insane amount of self-entitlement and toxic behavior from men for the past year that she couldn't help but be short with him.

"C'mon, Anna, we're friends."

"You copy my homework. Does that really count?"

"Martha also copies your homework," Georg pointed out.

"Touche," Anna replied sarcastically. "I guess we're the best of friends."

"Look, I'm not sure why you're upset. I've been really nice to you," Georg frowned, and Anna is suddenly deeply aware of his stance above her, looking down at her with hands on his hips. His power was made evident. She didn't think it was conscious but the male instinct, she'd found, was to assert the little power they still felt they had over women when they felt things weren't going their way. She took notice.

"What, do you want, an award? Just because your nice to me doesn't mean I owe you anything," Anna snapped, wheeling herself around so that she could get the fuck out of there.

Under his breath, breathed like a whisper but loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear, Georg said, "I should have known Hanschen was right. You _are_ a fucking lesbo."

She could feel all the eyes on her. She knew when people were looking at her because there were eyes on her all the time. Eyes with pity, eyes with hero complexes coming to fix her, eyes with relief. "At least I'm not her," those eyes said. The eyes now were not so kind. They eyes now pinned her in place. He'd outted her, especially as she fumbled for a witty retort and came up blank. Angry tears filled her eyes as she said nothing, only confirming what he said. She was a carpet-muncher, she was a fucking dyke, she was a fucking lesbo.

There was nothing to say so she left. But the pain was unbearable. That he had outted her, that she would never be given a chance to reveal herself when she was ready, that everyone she loved would find out through the grapevine using such explicit terms. Her heart was shattered. She had heard of heartbreak but she hadn't realized he heart would break for herself. That she would yearn for a better, kinder love for herself. That her heart could break because while she was concerned with being good and kind, a boy had no intention to treat her with the same sentiment.

She realized three things that day.

One, she realized how much she'd doubted the people around her.

She was sure when she first saw them coming that they would be outraged that someone had vindictively been spying on them. She started to apologize and explain that she would never want to hurt them or make them feel uncomfortable. She wanted them to know how much they meant to her, always just because they were her dearest friends, but before she could even get a word out she was quickly wrapped up in the arms of her friends. They told her how much they loved and cared for her, that something like this would never change that. They told her she had nothing to be sorry for. They'd come to comfort her instead of reprimand her. She had never understood tears of joy and relief until this moment.

She'd been wrong about them. Girls really were the best things in the world.

The second thing she understood now was that nothing they did would ever make things right.

Every adult they'd told of the abuse they'd been through had ignored them.

Melchior had shown "too much potential" to "ruin his future" over "one mistake." Never mind that that mistake had resulted in ruining Wendla's life, from the pregnancy to the abortion that had nearly killed her. Just a little mistake. No consequences for a boy who could have ended someone's entire existence.

Hanschen "hadn't even touched her" so he'd been absolved of his crimes. All he did was jack off in front of her. Never mind what Martha wanted. Who cares that it fed into the power dynamic he craved and could inspire him to do much worse things to equally vulnerable young girls. No, Hanschen had done nothing wrong.

Otto had belittled those sisters into hating each other but "players will play" and "boys will be boys." He was seen as a champion, being fought over by girls. Sure, it was their choice to love and dote on them, but all girls were ever taught was competition and he played them like a game, one only he could win. Their loss was a friendship that might be tarnished for a lifetime.

Moritz should be charged for attempted murder in Anna's eyes but it was just "irony" and Moritz "had his own issues." As if that made him exempt from consequences for his actions. Of nearly killing Ilse. He told her to do it. He egged her on. He stood there and watched. Ilse could be gone right now and it would be his doing but Ilse was damaged goods that weren't worth salvaging. But Moritz? His issues were worth addressing. Because any time a woman aired her problems they were topped by a man's.

Anna was furious with Ernst too as he'd never stood up for any of them even if he hadn't directly caused their pain. He knew. He knew of all of it and he never did anything. He stuck by Hanschen's side, even as Martha confronted him for what he did. He let it happen to them because it was easier to let them endure all that pain and suffering than to stick up to his friends. To him, it was confrontation he didn't want. To the girls, it was their lives. It was everything. Did he even care at all? Did it matter since he did nothing about it?

Disgusting. Vile. And yet they were all excused. They were all forgiven while the girls were blamed for problems created by these _monsters_. The girls were slutty or promiscuous or prudes or teases or asking for it but the boys? They were fucking angels in the eyes of anyone who could do something. And it would always be like that. There would be no justice, not in how things were done now.

Which is how she came to her last epiphany: the only way she would ever see an ounce of justice was if she took matters into her own hands. 

No one would ever see the problems for what they were. The boys would always be absolved unless she did something very swift an final to relieve the girls of the men who obviously cared and respected them so little. If she did nothing, they would continue this cycle of abuse over and over and over again. She did all she could do, except for something dark. She had yet to try something she'd never imagined herself doing until she'd opened her eyes this year. All this time she'd been so positive and kind and forgiving and it had gotten her nowhere. She wasn't forgiving anymore, and she certainly would never be so weak again. She would defend herself and more importantly, she would defend women. Maybe she was a carpet-muncher, a fucking dyke, a fucking lesbo. She was proud of her identity and of herself. She was proud of the women around her, all of whom deserved love and respect. The violations of the past? Anna would no longer stand for it. (Ha.)

No, she knew exactly what she would do to end it.


End file.
